Herculaneum
III.10. Bottega del Lanarius or Workshop of Lanarius.

Excavated
between 1928-29.

According
to Maiuri, this shop-room had no communication with the Casa del Tramezzo di
legno, although it would have undoubtedly have belonged to the same proprietor.
The square room had a very low ceiling, a floor of beaten earth and steps to an
upper floor. Found in the shop-room was a wooden press with a central screw for
pressing clothes. It was undoubtedly the shop of a clothes-merchant, a lanarius.

According to Pesando and
Guidobaldi, in the south wall of the shop-room, near to a small arched lararium
niche, were small stairs to the upper floor comprising of two rooms. The room
placed above the shop-room was provided with a latrine, whose discharge channel
was connected to the latrine of the shop at number 9. The other room was
positioned above the cubiculum and entrance corridor of the Casa del Tramezzo
di legno. One of the windows from a room in the upper floor also gave or took
light into the atrium of the Casa, giving some credence to the fact that the
owner of the Casa and the tenant or owner of the shop were closely linked.

Found during the excavation of the
shop, which had already been traversed by the Bourbon tunnels, was a single,
exceptional artefact; a press of charred wood, positioned within a masonry
basin/tank, but of which no trace remained.

The
staircase would have led to the upper floor small dwelling, consisting of two
rooms.

Photo
by Stanley A. Jashemski.

Source:
The Wilhelmina and Stanley A. Jashemski archive in the University of Maryland
Library, Special Collections (See collection page) and made available under the Creative
Commons Attribution-Non Commercial License v.4. See Licence
and use details.